News Round-up: Nancy Lee Grahn, Mag Readers, Zucker

Posted by
Roger Newcomb (We Love Soaps)

Median Age of Magazine Readers Rises
Since 2001, 64 of 90 leading consumer magazines have seen the median age of their readers increase faster than the population at large, according to a MediaPost analysis of the latest figures from Mediamark Research & Intelligence. The analysis, based on MRI's spring 2009 measurements, confirms the continuation of a long-term trend previously observed in 2006-2008.

The median age of female readers also increased between 4 and 4.9 years at Soap Opera Digest and Woman's Day.

GH's Nancy Lee Grahn is a 'tweetaholic'
"I am lying to the people I love. When they ask me what I'm doing, I tell them I am reading the Huffington Post, when in fact ... I am tweeting. I am aligning myself with other addicted celebrity tweeters like Elisabeth Hasselbeck, for which I am so ashamed. Even though I have not yet tweeted while drinking (okay, actually I have), I fear that I will wake up the next morning with a tweet blackout, having no recollection of what I twittered about. What if I, in a twitter stupor, follow Hasselbeck and mistakenly post her rants/tweets on my twitter home page and push send?! Someone could mistake me for a Republican! Stop the madness!"

Deep Soap: Summer School
Sara Bibel blogs: "School’s out for summer, which means that daytime’s teens are headed for the front burner. The prospect of teen storylines tends to turn adult viewers into grumpy old men screaming, 'Get off my lawn.' At their worst, they are the perfect storm of underdeveloped new characters, newbie actors and banal insta-love stories. But at their best, stories about the under-21 set have universal appeal."

It's possible to be gay and Muslim... even on EASTENDERS
Alex de Moller writes : "EASTENDERS is about a handful of cockneys getting pissed, generally talking rubbish and flaunting the trivial crap of their mundane lives. The show does not contain a moral message, and if it did, we’d all be married to ugly women and doing business in the pub. What’s important is that the show depicts what London really is: a modern Babylon, a weird and wonderful place where anything can happen and anyone can come together. Congrats to the producers for adding some flavour to the meat and potatoes of British television."

NBC Universal's Zucker Says Ad Market Has 'Bottomed Out'
NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker said he believes the advertising market has "bottomed out" as he also discussed the continued challenges of making up for lost TV revenues with digital business models at a technology conference.

He also said that with 60% of its profits coming from cable, "we're at our core a cable company," the Wall Street Journal reports.